These towers do bend more than steel towers and are more scary to climb. I
own a 50 Universal Tower at P40A http://www.qrz.com/p40a and I have climbed
it many times in Aruba's wind. I wonder where the "climbing it is not
recommended by the manufacturer" statement comes from as I don't recall ever
reading that in Universal's brochure. You can assemble the tower on the
ground and walk it up, but it's really not that easy, especially with an
antenna and rotator on top. I've walked up smaller ones, used a tow truck
to pull up a heavier one and I have built them vertically like any other
tower.
73,
John KK9A
To: towertalk <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Universal Tower questions
From: John Kemker <john@kemker.org>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:38:58 -0400
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
I'm reconsidering my plans for putting up a tower in my back yard.
Instead of putting up 5 sections of Rohn 25G and guying them with
Phillystran, I'm considering putting up a Universal Tower HD21-50
instead. One of the main reasons is the guys. We have a detached
garage in the back yard and the only way I can see to place the guys
comes very close to blocking the garage door or the path leading up to it.
So, I have questions:
From what I gather from reading the reflector, climbing these aluminum
towers is not recommended by the manufacturer. I also notice that the
recommended method of raising the tower is to build it on the ground,
then tilt it up. Can it also be tilted back down if work needs to be
done on the antenna or rotor?
What about grounding? Will the Polyphaser tower leg ground clamps
(stainless airplane clamps with a stainless "pad") be sufficient to keep
the aluminum/copper joint from experiencing corrosion? Still perform
the standard ground strap & (at least) two ground rods per leg
procedure? Ground to the tower or to the base?
All I'm planning on putting up on the tower is a Mosley CL-33 and a
W5WVO-modified Cushcraft A5-50 on top of a 15 ft. 2" dia. mast, turned
by a Yaesu G1000SDX. Single run of LD5-50F out to tower with a coax
switch up near the top to switch between the two beams. I *might* top
it off with a 10m vertical, but then again, might just put that
somewhere else, like on the house.
--
--JohnK
73 de W5NNH
10X 75371/M&M 117/SMIRK 6185/Six Club 285/TRA 2499/Norcross 228 F&AM
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